“ ‘She’s good.’
“That was his answer. She’s good. Like it was a mantra. Do you believe this shit? We all looked at each other. I was on the verge of firing him on the spot. I swear I almost did it right there and then.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Two things, Warren. Two things every one of us should never forget. Remember Congressman Jimmy Longworth?”
“Longworth of Missouri. Who could forget Jimmy Longworth? You should’ve known him, Mr. President. Unbelievable character. What about him?”
“When I first came to Washington, I got into a pissing contest with one of the agencies. Jimmy stopped by my office with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses and said, ‘Billy Boy, in Washington, if you learn nothing else, remember one thing. You can make life miserable for an Old Hand, but you never ever want to fire him.’ When I asked, ‘Why not?’ he said, ‘Because Old Hands know where the bodies are buried. You fire one of them, they’ll go. They won’t say a word. They’ll make damn sure they got their pensions nice and clear. Then six months later, you’ll find yourself talking to some smart-ass reporter from the Washington Post or maybe a grand jury on something that’ll bring down the whole administration including you. And you’re done for the rest of your life. That’s why.’ ”
“What’s the second reason?”
“My predecessor as CIA director. He told me something I never forgot. ‘Saul’s biggest problem is morality; but he’s not only ten times smarter than you think you are, Warren, with all your Harvard Phi Beta Bullshit and all, he’s also the smartest Jew son of a bitch you’ll ever meet. So after you finish yelling at him—and believe me, sooner or later everybody wants to—listen to what he says. Carefully.’
“So I stood up at the meeting and told Saul that he was going on administrative leave, effective immediately. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He just looked at me, Warren, with those glasses, and said he thought that was a good idea and just got up and left. We all sat there scratching our heads wondering what the hell just happened.”
“So that’s it? Then how on earth did we come to this mess?”
“Really, Bill. What happened?”
“Simple, Mr. President. He got the Aardvark report from the girl, Carrie. Twenty minutes later, he walked into my office. Then I got to meet the real Saul.”
Tampa, Florida
14 April 2009
That morning, Saul Berenson, CIA Middle East Division chief, publicly reprimanded at a meeting the previous day by the vice president of the United States, William Walden, and on official administrative leave, woke from a dream he hadn’t had since childhood. He was alone; the house silent, empty.
His wife, Mira, was gone. Back to Mumbai, India, two days earlier. If anyone asked, it was because of her mother’s illness, and to deal with the issues of Human Rights Watch, the charitable organization chapter her family ran. In reality, it was because she and Saul barely spoke anymore. There’s the official and the unofficial story in marriages like everything else, Saul thought as he dressed and packed for the airport.
Sandy Gornik, an angular, curly-haired up-and-comer from the Iranian desk, took time from the office to drive him to the airport. During the drive, Saul let it slip that he was going to Mumbai to spend some time with his wife and her family.
“Have you been there before? India?” Gornik asked. He had heard about Saul nearly getting fired. Nearly everyone in the NCS (National Clandestine Services), certainly everyone on the fourth floor at Langley, had heard about it. The story was topic A in the cafeteria. In fact, Sandy suspected he was probably not doing himself any good, careerwise, driving Saul to the airport.
But Gornik was one of Saul’s Save-the-Dead-Drop band, a tiny group, some four or five wise-ass, mostly single-rotation ops officers who picked up crumbs of tradecraft Saul dropped as he scurried through Langley’s anonymous corridors going from what he called “one moronic meeting to those where the Washington art form of wasting time reaches absolute mind-destroying perfection.”
“Once,” Saul said to Gornick. “Indian families are … well, it’s like getting into bed with a tribe of octopuses. No matter which way you turn, there are arms everywhere. Trust me, it isn’t simple.”
“I’m sure your wife and her family will be glad to finally spend some time with you,” Gornik said, hoping that came out right, that he didn’t sound patronizing or like he knew Saul had been involuntarily pushed out to pasture.
“I’m not so sure,” Saul said.
It caught Sandy Gornick, who always knew what to say to catch the female GS-8s and -9s trolling in Georgetown pubs, but not the real thing to someone who until yesterday had been not only his boss’s boss, but something of a force, if not yet a legend, in the Company, off guard.
“Sorry,” he said, face reddening.
“So am I,” Saul said, looking out the window at the traffic on the I-395, and that was that.
Cover established.
Saul thought he would prep for his next meeting during the two-hour flight from Reagan International to Tampa, but instead he kept his laptop closed. Officially, he was on leave. Officially, I don’t exist, he thought, looking out the plane’s window. Below, there were only wisps of clouds, and far below, the rolling green and brown hills of North Carolina.
Suspended in midair. Disconnected. A perfect metaphor.
He wondered if he would ever see his wife, Mira, again, because he certainly wasn’t going to India. He wasn’t even sure he would ever see Langley again. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was Carrie’s intel. It had changed the equation. It was about to change everything the United States was involved with in the Middle East.
The dream.
It had come back. For years, he’d had it almost every night as a child. And then one day it stopped. The day after he told his father he didn’t want to go to the old Orthodox synagogue in South Bend, the nearest to Calliope, anymore. He didn’t want to be Bar Mitzvah. And his father just looked at him, took his mother in the car, and, leaving him standing there, they drove off to the shul in South Bend without a word. Nothing. As if to say, Have your own war with God, Shaulele. You think because you say so, this is the end of the matter? You think God has nothing to say too?
Not a dream. A nightmare. He was a little boy in a ghetto somewhere in Europe. It was like some old black-and-white World War II movie, only it didn’t feel like a movie. He was there. It was night and he was hiding in an attic. The Nazis, the Gestapo, were hunting him. He had heard someone talking, and even though he didn’t understand the language, he understood they were informing on him. The Nazis knew he was there.
They were searching the lower floors of the house, coming closer. He could hear their dogs, German shepherds, panting, coming closer. Closer. He didn’t know where his parents were. In the concentration camps. Gone. Alive? Dead? He didn’t know. He didn’t know where anybody was. All the Jews were gone. He had been alone for days, weeks, without food. Living like a rat. Scavenging food from trash in the alleys at night; licking water from dirty pipes in the coal cellar. But now somebody had told on him and they were coming for him.
The Nazis were talking in German, a language he didn’t know, although it was close enough to Yiddish that he got a sense of it. He was so afraid he couldn’t move. One of the dogs barked twice, very loud. It was close. Too close, just on the other side of the closet door. Suddenl, the door opened and light spilled in.
“Heraus!”